This role consisted of working as the hands of a computer-programmer - who had become unable to type as a result of contracting a repetitive strain injury in the tendons of his wrists through excessive typing.
It mainly involved entering, compiling and debugging dictated C programs but also involved work which ranged from acting as a recording engineer or as a masseur, to acting as a buyer or performing clerical duties.
The computer programs we were writing were in the field of DTMF-operated automated telecoms systems, and my supervisor was a telecoms consultant.
I was part of a project involving the fitting of telephone lines to the
electricity meters of offices and retail outlets throughout Britain.
Initially my role was to cold-call the site involved and arrange for
someone there to meet with a BT engineer. After generating instructions
for the engineer through the internal computer system, I then was
responsible for liasing between the electricity company, the
engineers, and the sites where the line was to be fitted.
After playing this role for a period I underwent promotion and was made
responsible for training new staff how to perform my original task, and in
the details of the operation of BT‘s two main computer systems.
This work was performed on behalf of British Telecom.
October 1993 to January 1994
Computer programmer
My task was to rewrite a component of the operating system in use by the
company which was responsible for maintaining and displaying multiple
documents, allowing for simultaneous editing of them.
When this work was finished I worked on programming a database to keep
track of the client's informants (the client was the police force).
This was clerical work in banks, local government, etc.
Sepember 1983 to October 1990
Computer games programmer
My first computer programs were published when I was fifteen, and over the
next five years I wrote five more. Between them these totalled over 70,000
sales in England and Europe.
In 1985 one of my programs was voted "Game of the Year", and the following
year I was described by my publishers as their "Programmer of the Year".
The programs were computer games which were written for
Acorn computers,
either in 100% 6502 machine code or 100% ARM machine code.
This work was performed on behalf of
Superior Software
and Minerva Systems.
